“I have land and livestock,” MacCallister replied, but even as he was saying the words, he realized that he would never see either again.
“Would you feel the work of an able-bodied seaman beneath a man of your station?” Captain Powell asked.
“Captain, as you have pointed out, and as I readily admit, I am a stowaway on your ship. My alternative to working, it would appear, would be to spend the entire voyage in the brig. I would consider honest labor to be far superior to that condition.”
Captain Powell laughed out loud.
“Very well, MacCallister, you may work for your passage. Mr. Norton, assign him to the starboard watch. Did Peters leave his chest?”
“Aye, sir, he did.”
“MacCallister, you are a bit taller than Peters, and a bit broader in the shoulders I would say. But I think you could wear his clothes. I advise you to do so, for your current attire is ill suited for the task at hand.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Duff replied.
“Mr. Norton, take MacCallister below, get him properly dressed, then muster the crew.”
“Aye, aye, Cap’n.”
It was dim belowdecks, though not entirely dark as the sun filtered down through the hatch above, falling in little individual squares of light on the floor of the deck under the fo’castle. Duff saw several men, bare from the waist up, sitting on chests or coils of rope. They looked around in curiosity as Duff and the bosun stepped into their midst.
“Men, this is MacCallister. He’ll be takin’ Peters’s place,” Norton said.
“He don’t look like no sailor man to me,” one of the men said. “He looks more like what you would call a gentleman.”
“Whatever he may look like, he is hired on as a sailor, and a sailor he will be,” Norton said. He looked toward Duff. “Get changed into working clothes.”
“Aye, sir. And thank you, Mr. Norton, for providing a way for me to avoid the brig,” Duff said.
“Just see to it that you do your work, for I’ll not be making excuses for you to the captain,” Norton said as he started back up the ladder.
After Norton left, none of the others spoke to him. The sailors were not purposely ignoring Duff, but neither were they inviting him into their circle. Duff knew from his few voyages, the most recent being to Egypt with his regiment, that a ship’s crew was a close-knit group. He wasn’t going to fit in right away; indeed, perhaps not for the entire voyage. But, as he told the captain, this was better than being in the brig, and it was infinitely better than hanging, which fate awaited him back in Scotland.
As Duff went through Peters’s sea bag, pulling out clothes, he was very aware of their pungent odor. Steeling himself to it, he pulled on a pair of pants and a blue-and-white striped shirt. Once dressed, he looked around the fo’castle, which would furnish his quarters for the voyage. It was filled with coils of rigging, spare sails, and items of machinery, many of which were foreign to him. He saw a hammock hanging from one hook, just above Peters’s kit. Looking to his left, he saw another hook and deduced that his sleeping would be accommodated by stretching the hammock from one hook to the other. He was about to stretch out to see how it worked when the hatch was opened and Norton shouted out to the men below.
“All hands on deck! All hands on deck!”
At Norton’s call, the sailors made haste to climb the ladder and spill out onto the deck. Duff went up as well, and started toward the left side of the ship when he emerged on deck from the top of the ladder, but one of the sailors reached out for him.
“Here, lad,” he said. “You’ll be starboard with us.”
“Thank you,” Duff said, thankful not only for the information but also because the sailor had spoken to him.
When all had come topside, they gathered toward the stern and looked up toward the quarterdeck. There, Duff could see the helmsman still at the helm, his hands securely on the wheel spokes, his eyes staring straight ahead. The vessel was leaned over, racing swiftly before the wind, and Duff could hear the noise of the water streaming back from the bow. He could also feel the pitch and fall of the deck beneath him as it rolled with the swell of the sea. He was glad that he had been to sea before, because he was confident that he would be able to complete this voyage without getting sick.
The captain stepped up to the rail forward of the quarterdeck, then looked down at his gathered crew.
“Men, we had a good crossing coming over, and I expect an even better crossing on the return. You know me well by now, and you know that when you perform your tasks as you have been assigned, you find me a pleasant enough captain. Shirk in your tasks and, I assure you, you will find me most unpleasant indeed. Mr. Norton?”
“Aye, sir?”
“Post the watches.”
“Aye sir.
“Port watch topside, starboard belowdecks.”
Duff went belowdecks with the rest of the starboard watch, and when he saw a couple of them stretch out their hammocks for a nap, he decided to do the same thing.
One week at sea
If Duff thought the life of a sailor at sea would be easy, he was quickly disabused of that notion. The ship’s officers found much for them to do, and while Duff initially thought it might merely be a means of making work to keep the sailors busy, he soon realized that all the work was necessary. Whenever any of the standing rigging became slack, a condition that seemed to be constant, the coverings had to be removed, tackles tended to, and tension put on the rigging until it was drawn well taut. Afterward, the coverings had to be replaced, which, Duff learned, was no easy thing to do.
Even the work caused work, because one rope could not be adjusted without requiring an adjustment to another. One could not stay a mast aft by the back stays without slacking up the head stays. In addition to the constant attention to the ship’s rigging, there was greasing, oiling, varnishing, painting, scraping, and scrubbing to be attended to, plus furling, bracing, making and setting sail, pulling, and climbing. Duff found that there was much to occupy him.
“Them that sails on the steamships don’t do all this work,” a sailor named Kelly said.
“They ain’t hardly what you would call sailors neither,” Jiggs said. “Them that sails on the steamships ain’t nothin’ but passengers goin’ along for the ride. You ain’t a real sailor ’lessen you are on a wind ship. Sails, that’s where the word sailor comes from.”
Those who were close enough to overhear the exchange laughed, but the work continued.
As the voyage progressed, Duff discovered that the business of running the ship was much to be preferred over the long, silent hours of night watch. That was because it was during those hours of night watch when he most felt the pain of Skye’s death.
More than one time he was sure that he heard her voice.
“Duff, my darling Duff, I am here. Can you not see me?”
Duff would turn with a small cry of joy and a smile on his face. But the smile would be replaced by an expression of sorrow as he realized that what he was hearing was the whisper of the wind from the sails or the murmur of water slipping by the hull, and no more.
Sometimes, too, he would see her flashing eyes in the green light of the luminescent fish that would keep pace with the ship. Such experiences were bittersweet for him. On the one hand, it kept the memory of Skye ever fresh in his mind; on the other, it kept the pain of his loss ever aching in his heart.
Toward the end of the second week at sea, the starboard watch was below when Duff heard the raindrops falling on deck thick and fast. He could also hear the loud and repeated orders of the mate, trampling of feet, creaking of the blocks, and all the accompaniments of a coming storm. In a few minutes, the slide of the hatch was thrown back, which made the noise from above even louder.